The House select committee investigating the January 6 riot subpoenaed “alternate electors” from seven states who planned to cast their votes for former president Donald Trump as part of their investigation.
The committee sent subpoenas to the chairperson and committee secretary for each group of “alternate electors” from Arizona, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia, Michigan and Nevada.
“Based on publicly available information and information provided to the Select Committee, we believe that you have documents and information that are relevant to the Select Committee’s investigation,” a letter from committee Chairman Bennie Thompson sent to Nancy Cottle, who was one of the “alternate electors” from Arizona.
“For example, according to documents sent to the National Archives, you were a purported Electoral College elector who met with other purported electors on or about December 14, 2020 to cast votes for former President Trump and former Vice President Pence despite the fact that your state had made a final determination that Joseph Biden, Jr. and Kamala Harris were the winners of the November 2020 presidential election and the appointment of their electors had been certified.”
In December, Mr Thompson wrote in a letter to former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows’s lawyer that on 6 November in 2020, a member of Congress texted Mr Meadows, describing plans “apparently about appointing alternate electors in certain states as part of a plan that the member acknowledged would be ‘highly controversial,' and to which Mr. Meadows apparently said, ‘I love it.’”
Mr Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani reportedly oversaw the effort to put forward these illegitimate electors, as CNN and The Washington Post both reported. The groups reportedly met on 14 December 2020 to put forward the electors as a means to steal the 2020 presidential election.
In turn, as Mr Thompson wrote in his letter to Lorainne Pellegrino, the delegation of purported electors sent an alleged “Certificate of the Votes” for then-Vice President Mike Pence to read during the joint session of Congress on January 6, 2021.
“We believe the individuals we have subpoenaed today have information about how these so-called alternate electors met and who was behind that scheme,” Mr Thompson said in a statement Friday. “We encourage them to cooperate with the Select Committee’s investigation to get answers about January 6th for the American people and help ensure nothing like that day ever happens again.”
The House of Representatives voted to hold Mr Meadows in contempt of Congress. Similarly, it also voted to hold former Trump administration official Steve Bannon in contempt of Congress.
